In a rather authoritarian, sweeping effort to increase its worldwide Windows 10 install base, Microsoft has announced it will end support for operating systems older than Windows 10 on newer chipset platforms, including Intel’s Skylake, in a year and a half from now, and that Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows OS on new chipset platforms going forward in 2016.

Windows 10 now has 120 million activations thanks mostly to the fact that Microsoft is offering for free to Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users. Now Redmond has told its OEM chums they need to prepare to stop selling Windows 7 Professional from October 31 2016.